Job stress

[m3unsure]

How would you guys rate the level of stress in the world of pain medicine?

Versus general anesthesia?

I have great interest in it since my days in medical school and I am looking to apply in a couple years.

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[Ligament]

This is a good question.

I'm not an anesthesiologist so can't comment on 1/2 of your question.

Personally, I find the stress low-medium. We are not saving lives, but rather quality of life. Nobody is dying on us unless we have a rare complication during a procedure or a medication overdose.

We deal with a lot of patients with personality disorders, behavioral problems, addictive personalities. They can cause a lot of headaches.

Some of us do inpatient pain medicine as well, which can vary in stress quite a bit depending on your inpatient population (cancer vs. trauma vs. chronic pain patients).

My anesthesiologist buddies sometimes find clinical pain medicine more stressful than general. They tell me general has pretty consistently good outcomes nowadays. The outcomes in chronic pain are anything but consistently good....

 

[Tenesma]

it is a completely different stress and it also depends on what kind of anesthesia you practice...

if you are doing anesthesia at a larger hospital with a OB/trauma population - it can be stressful... you never, ever know what is going to come through that door, you dread uterine ruptures and prolapsed cords, and the re-intubations in the ICU with literally no real back-up...

if you are doing anesthesia for a surgery center or a small community hospital without real serious OB or Trauma - then it is a joke - a lot of ASA 1s with maybe one or two big cases/year

the stress of doing chronic pain are the psychological mind games - you get personally/emotionally invested in some of your patients who aren't doing well, and the torture that some of the patients can put you through.... > 80% of people you see are generally unhappy one way or the other - and that unhappiness/depression does affect you... that is why a well-rounded external life is important with frequent breaks to decompress...

two different stresses...

 

[Aether2000]

I agree 100% with Tenesma...a few bad apples can make your life hell. The other severely stressful part of what I do includes endoscopic spine surgery and cervical transforaminal epidural steroid injections. These sphincter tightening procedures may require laxatives for a few days or anal botox injections. Another moderately stressful situation is inheriting a patient treated by stupid doctors with extremely high dose opiates (2 or 3 long acting simultaneously) for unclear medical reasons who abandoned their patients or left the state.
But most of the time, the pain patients reach a detente with their doc over time, each being aware the treatment of chronic pain requires chronic treatment, and that it is largely incurable with the current technology. My job is usually a lot of fun provided my computer is in a good mood on any given day.

 

[Mister Mxyzptlk]

Algos, next time you do one of those stressful procedures let me know. I want to see if I can make a diamond from a piece of coal.

 

[Aether2000]

My wife wears a 3 carat....good thing she doesn't know from whence it came

 

[Mister Mxyzptlk]

"Actually, Honey, those dark spots aren't flaws . . ."

 

[Aether2000]

I couldn't eradicate the inclusions but got the facet angle perfect (ouch!). Unfortunately GIA color is somewhere in the latter half of the alphabet....